Articulate explanation of how SOPA came about, and how it might be stopped

A redditor called BobA841908 lays out a lucid and compelling case for how SOPA came about and what might stop it:

A full blackout is a reasonable response, because, in the language that is so popular with politicians, SOPA is going to result in excessive regulation that will cost jobs and likely cause significant increases in the cost of services, perhaps to the point where those services will no longer be able to provided on an ad supported or free to consumer basis.

The only impediment is how to make this coordinated. For instance all the Google, Bing, and Yahoo are going to have cooperate. Otherwise any blackout may simply result in loss of customers for one service, not a clear message to call one's representative. I suspect that if the services choose a minute during the day when no results are returned, only a message to call your representative and state your opinion on SOPA, the bill will die. If Google and MS tell users that search will die if SOPA is passed, no amount of politicking will be able to counteract that message. Anything less is a show of support for SOPA by the major players.

You can't combat piracy. Externalities are a cost of doing business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding him/herself.

There's exactly one way to maximize profit, and that is to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for at a price that they are willing to pay. The pirates were never your customers and never will be, and the sooner the companies accept that and focus on the real problems (massively overpricing everything when first released, delivering products that can't easily be moved between devices because of the restrictive/broken DRM, and the declining quality of entertainment products in general), they'll have better profits. That's not what SOPA/PIPA and similar legislation are about, however. They're about eliminating legitimate lower-cost competition.

The biggest problem is that the old economy doesn’t want to update their models. Apple, Adobe, and everyone else establishes their patients and fights hard crushing anyone who challenges them.

However its worked out that for every iPod you use to buy microsoft got a patent cut (or vice-versa with the zune, I can’t remember).

There was a sort of balance. These companies are saying “There are 1,000,000s of users of our software and we only sold 100,000, we lost billions of dollars”. They do fail to realize that people don’t use all the features of the software even if they don’t use it for more than a single project or once a month.

Movies I think are based on an old model as well. Movies aren’t that good any more (special effects excluded I mean purely content). People are poorer. If movies aren’t that good and movies are the first luxury to get cut out of the budget, don’t you think maybe you are suffering because the economy is poor?

Personally, I think people should take advantage of SOPA and shut down walmart.com for using un-paid for stock photos. These corporations could have SOPA turned on their heads very quickly even if its just for pranks.

That’s not what SOPA/PIPA and similar legislation are about, however. They’re about eliminating legitimate lower-cost competition.

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. There is a creative renaissance in progress on the Internet. Better entertainment and better products in general are being made and marketed at price points that don’t allow 28 Vice-Presidents to feed at the trough.

For those who have been watching intelligently, the expectation that big content would eventually try to utterly destroy the Internet has been obvious and real for more than 15 years. Bills like the one that forces micro-cap toy makers to test their products for lead content (written in response to big toy manufacturers importing cheap lead-tainted toys while exempting those manufacturers from the rules, naturally) are designed to do nothing except directly force good companies out of business.

This is nothing more than an act of anti-competition, and if the Internet is destroyed, the country will follow. No nation can recover from deliberately starving an entire generation of educated and talented people.

As far as solutions are concerned, I think one of the first elements of a reworked copyright law should be compulsory licensing coordinated with the system set up by the Creative Commons.

I’m an independent musician with a couple of CDs out. We’ve played at SXSW and other festivals but don’t break even.

I remember giving my CD to a cashier at a cafe once so she could pass it along to their booking agent. She said, “Great! I’ll burn a copy tonight for myself!” I said, “Give me a cup of tea for free, please.” She said, “I can’t do that.” I said, “You’re going to burn my CD.”

She said, “I haven’t paid for music for 3 years!” She probably didn’t keep track of when she last bought a CD, so I assumed she just meant a long time.

Do you think this 23 or so year old woman wouldn’t have purchased music in the last 3 years if she had to pay? Of course she would have! She probably spends the cost of a CD on two drinks plus tip at bars twice a month.

Come on, people. Who are we kidding? I’m not with any label and actually like when people steal my music, as I’m unknown and pirating my tunes is flattering and good marketing, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s stealing.

An acquaintance of mine pirates all his music and movies and also steals toilet paper and salt and pepper from restaurants. He said he hasn’t bought toilet paper for years! But at least he doesn’t complain about big corporate toilet-paper companies not deserving his money. He simply admits he’s stealing.

People criticize big politicians and big corporations for being crooks and feeling overly entitled to things.

The only difference between a 23 year old pirating a song and George Bush Jr pirating the 2000 election is SCALE. Cram all the little, medium and big pirating in between those two, and you’ll have a straight line of pirates, from hipster grunge petty thieving kids to slick election-stealing Texan oilmen, all dominated by their reptilian brain cores, as Dr. Peter C. Whybrow (director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA) might suggest ( “American Mania: When More Is Not Enough”). Dr. Whybrow writes that the empathetic part of humans is found in the outer layer of the brain that evolved much later than our reptilian brain core, which drives many impulses, including stealing (not a lizard concept). Activating one layer much more than others causes it to dominate; ergo, America’s doomed because its plethora^3 of stuff tempting us (to buy and/or steal) activates our reptilian cores so much it dominates the outer layer. In other words, we become greedy assholes in environments of extreme plenty.

I’m against SOPA and know that pirate research yada yada yada shows that stealing music is ultimately better for musicians. Big record companies are indeed mega scum. Even a lot of medium-sized labels are shaky, plus smaller ones disappear in a blink of an eye ( I turned down a small label offer). I heard Rob Zombie’s agent or publicist once say, roughly, “Record companies are just banks: they just lend you money for producing and marketing your music then take 90% ownership of your stuff. It’s better to be your own bank or raise money from relatives and friends.” That’s the clean version. The actual version was laced with expletives slamming mega labels.

I hate to say it, but I although I understand the benefits of people stealing my music and like it from a marketing point of view, I look down on pirates as being weak and thieves, like George Bush Jr. I know that stinks, I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s just an impulse reaction.

PS

This probably also explains why someone in Portland, Oregon’s Occupy movement embezzled about $20k from its “financial committee,” subsequently disbanded. I heard this in Oakland, CA from a Portland guy (Jeremy?) who said he saw it happen there and pushed to disband the financial committee with its lizard-enticing pot of prey.

first of all stop talking about reptilians …what the hell? how do u think anyone is ever going to take your seriously?

also. u are complaining more people dont buy your music yet you FAIL to mention your name or your bands name in your entire comment.

can you see what might be the problem with your approach to marketing here ,hm?

just look at bands that do break even and ask yourself why. i m not in a band but have given advice to many of my friends. easy steps- make most if not all of your music (at least live gigs etc) available on your website ,bandcamp,myspace,facebook etc. put all your stuff on youtube. try all streaming sites like grooveshark spotify etc. post comments on bands you like or u think are somewhat influential or similar. get your friends to like all if not most of your posts. document the increase in traffic/clicks for gigs/recorddeals/festival applications etc.

also focus on developing a strong local base that can then feed ur online presence. most bands get successful because they already have a local fan crowd not because they get internet famous. you should be making most ur money from gigs and merch most of all.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, he wanted to convey his thoughts without pimping his band. Shocking, I know in the age of internet narcissism.

“i am not in a band”, and you give “easy” steps to become rich and famous musician. I would imagine, like most artists and bands these days, that they have done just what you have said. I did too, as do a million other struggling artists. It’s still a one in a million shot, and even less likely with any tom, dick or harry being able to paste loops together and weedly deedley on a controller keyboard.

Hi, how about singing ( if that’s what you do for living ) in a language other than english. Believe it or not the rest of the world not only buys good music but they actually appreciate something other than wasp music. Try mandarin, or French maybe swahili .

Most singers on this planet do not have access to all those networking sites, expensive computers , studio time and nice “gap” clothes. And you probably spent hours watching clips on youtube or downloaded music sheets so you can get some inspiration. This is pure western luxury. And you have the gal to complain as if you are a cancer sufferer. We should occupy your flat.

“I remember giving my CD to a cashier at a cafe once so she could pass it along to their booking agent”

So you (the owner of the CD) asked for a favor that actually had a money value (service of getting your music in front of someone you want to hear it) for free.

Said person states they are going to make a copy (cost to you: 0.00) which increases your fan base possibly – gets your music placed in a desired position (in front of the guy you want to hear it) and increases the odds that the placement of the music will come with a personal recommendation.

You state you would like your tea for free – note that the cashier does not *own* the tea – she’s an employee. You *own* the CD and the IP of the music.

So you expect to get something for nothing, act like an arse when someone tells you what the price is – then demand that they steal from their company which has *nothing* to do with your transaction.

You are lucky they didn’t just take the CD and chuck it in the trash. After what you did if I had been the cashier I would have.

You don’t write, record or perform music do you? Say you write a book. You stop at a local bookstore that is looking to sell local author’s works and see if they might sell some copies, copies you paid for out of your own pocket. She says, “great!” I’ll photocopy the entire book for myself as well before I pass it on to the owner.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? The reason it’s easy to steal music is because it’s easy to justify the fact it is “just” a digital file. It’s not really “worth” anything. Of course a band or and artist can perform music and charge people to listen to them, or maybe make a t-shirt and sell it, but then you are forced to continually tour and hock your merchandise just to break even, and that is if you are lucky, most are not.

How does it feel to spend months or years writing, recording, producing, mixing songs and have some moron say, “you should be glad to give this all away! You’ll have more fans!”? Like shit. You see, there is a difference between “product” and “art”. What people have to to expect from their music is a product, totally removed from the work it took to make it.

Piracy is here to stay, and he is spot on about the reason. You’d think people would be supportive of independent artists or musicians and realize there is no “bank” behind them besides their own pockets, yet we’re supposed to be gratefully that you downloaded our music for free, share it with your buddies and then maybe buy a t-shirt or ticket to a show? See above comment about “shows” and t-shirts.

By the way, any idea on how difficult and expensive it is to coordinate a “tour” or find shows to play (that aren’t pay to play) so people that already have your music for free might pay a few bucks for a live experience? I didn’t think so.

Internet marketing 101, give all your shit away free and pray somebody eventually pays for it. It might work for a lucky few, but for most, it doesn’t.

Merchandise – samples given away all the time *especially* to the vendors to get the product on the market.

All of this is called Marketing. I don’t know what kind of world you live in where vendors sell things they aren’t aware of – but even wal mart actually looks at – inspects – and cares about the stuff they put on the shelves.

Your ‘local’ store that wants to promote an unknown band isn’t going to do so without listening to the music.

Last time I checked people sent bucketloads of CD’s to producers trying to get them to sign the band – these people are all pirates?

Just because you make something doesn’t make you a special snowflake that gets to call any and all freebies piracy.

My point is that if you are an unknown giving away samples to get people interested in your product is part of selling yourself. If you don’t plan on giving some of your crap away to get interest going good luck on making a penny.

Even more abstract art is like this – artists *want* their stuff put in galleries and shows – for *FREE* why? Oh that’s right because if no one ever looks at their stuff – then who is going to buy it?

You think stuff gets on the radio because each station buys the song and then licenses the right to play it?

You need to look up the term payola to see just how much the signed pro artists give away.

There’s exactly one way to maximize profit, and that is to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for at a price that they are willing to pay. The pirates were never your customers and never will be

The distinction being made is that most people will not go to the effort and risk of stealing things they can get legally and easily for a price they can afford. Just so, most people will not invest the time and effort of copying something (that might not be loaded with viruses and might be what bittorrent says it is) if they can more easily get it at a reasonable price – say, 99 cents a song for example (although I usually pay much less).

There are people who do not pay, who will never pay. You are honestly claiming they don’t exist? You never met a shoplifter? Those are the people the quote refers to. The so-called “pirates” who make a living from illicit copying. The people who fail to understand the value proposition of honest commerce.

Congress: We’re going to make life on the internet more difficult!
Internet: We’re going to inconvenience everyone! But just for a few hours because we need to make money.

By itself, I think that’s a rather silly way to bring awareness to the problem.

A much better way would be to shut down all the internet accounts of all the politicians and lobby groups that support SOPA. Shut off their twitters and facebooks and googleplusses and domains and do not allow them to be recreated. When their email hits your router, drop it on the floor.

Hit these people right in the heart of their political fund-raising machine. That is a message they will listen to.

And it can be done! If google can drop my plus because I want my profile picture to be a waffle, then they can find a way to justify doing this, too.

This is nothing to do with “capitalism”, it’s what economists call “agency”, the difference between what people are paid to do and what they actually do.

If you look at the music, film or dead tree publishing industries you see a glaring fact that only a tiny % of the consumer price goes to the people who make the content. A writer will often get less than 10% of the cover price, ditto musicians.
Very little goes to shareholders, profits in most media are actually quite poor, this is not good capitalism.

That is because the media industries support a vast number of middlemen, media execs who add little value and often subtract value. The structure is set up to benefit these rent-seekers who care about their jobs not their company because in an efficient market they aren’t part of it.
*Any* change will hurt some of these people, and thus a calculus that says “if we do X, the firm will make 50% more money, but 20% of our middlemen will lose their well paid jobs, and given that the market for “vice president CD sales Rap Music for Western USA” is bad and getting worse they may never work again.
Note the geography in that job title in an ITunes world why would you have jobs based on geography within one country ? Nut they exist, and the demand for “regionalisation” is simply people protecting their jobs.
I am a member of a lunching group of bankers and last year we had an event on film financing. Hardened bankers, some of whom had been personally denounced in newspapers and TV news were shocked at the degree of venality, false accounting and greed in the film business, that should tell us something.

Record/Film Execs rarely get sympathy, but take out that bracket and just call them “workers”, these workers are having their jobs in promoting art and culture destroyed by technology and they are taking action to protect the income of their families. Like many industrial workers before them, they are refusing to implement working practices that would make them unemployable. If they made cars, people who would descibe themselves as “left” in the political spectrum would be on their side, so what we have here is not capitalism, but agency effects which look more like industrial socialism.

The structural corruption of US politics where one governor gets more “donations” for one campaign than spent by all parties for a national election in a country like Britain means that these “agents” can use their employers money to buy themselves a few more pay days.

“Like many industrial workers before them, they are refusing to implement working practices that would make them unemployable. If they made cars, people who would descibe themselves as “left” in the political spectrum would be on their side”

neither record execs nor car execs are “industrial workers”. they are executives: the people who benefit from reducing the wages and benefits of those who do the actual work; parasites.

The best way companies can fight SOPA and PIPA is to just not comply. When a blocking order is in place, just throw it in the trash. If every telecommunications company refuses to comply with SOPA, how will it look if the Feds with their guns started busting down the doors of all the offices of the search engines, ISPs, and content user sites? It’s a game of chicken that we would be guaranteed to win. I say FUCK EM! Times like these call for civil disobedience.

If you make a quality product, and price it fairly, giving the consumer a chance to “try before they buy” is a plus, not a minus.

If you make a shitty product, over-price it, and make it hard to use on devices, people won’t buy it. The most recent lesson of the way a person should market and sell their product was Louis CK, who I believe will become known as both a hero (to consumers and artists wanting to self-market) and a villain (to corporations who long for the “good old days”).

A one minute blackout would be far too easy for your ridiculous lawmakers to ignore.
How about one minute on Day1, two minutes on Day2, four minutes on Day4, eight minutes on Day6, sixteen minutes on Day8….That’ll focus their attention!

As long as corrupt malicious corporations are able to legally, if not morally or ethically, bribe congressmen there will be corrupt representatives more than eager to champion their cause de jour. The problem is the system and the extremely poor quality and integrity of political leadership at all levels in the US.

I would love for the big web-based companies to shut everything down for a day. “A Day Without Internet”. Everyone would freak the fuck out and there’d no doubt be A LOT of anger directed at these companies (rather than the government and lobbyists who are the ones that deserve it), but hopefully it would open everyone’s eyes to just what’s actually at stake.

I was thinking Google should just publically state they are moving their servers outside of the United States, into Sweden or Netherlands, just like they did with Google China. (“click here to redirect to google.nl!”) Heck, if SOPA/PIPA passes, they should move their headquarters out of Mountain View.

First IANAL but I seam to be the only one who has figure the below out for some reason.

There is something that a lot of people don’t know and I am not just talking about normal everyday people but even the people who are supposed to know about things like this don’t know.

And it is this: Most copyright issues have nothing to do with copyright and trying to classify and legislate them as copyright is wrong and maybe even illegal.I know what your thinking how can a copyright issue have nothing to do with copyright and its simple when its a LICENCING issue.Its very simple, copyright is meant to protect and control creative works be it a painting, a book or music and movies the problem is what happens when company’s start interfering with this protection by law by issuing private licences. Two example to make it clear to you.

You buy a painting, simple canvas and paint. You own the painting and can do what ever you want with it be it reselling or displaying publicly or privately. You can even charge people to come and see it, this is because you own the item and can do what you want with your item to the limits of the law but you do not own the copyright to that item so while you can charge people to see it you can not make a copy in anyway be it in paint or print and sell it as that would be violating the right of copy the law grants the copyright holder. Everything is fine we all know where we stand.

Now this time you go out and buy a movie on a dvd. Come home play it and what pops up? a licence for home use only no public performances and other conditions. If you want to go beyond the conditions you need to buy a commercial licence i.e. playing music your own in a public or commercial premises. Here is where the problems start. Firstly by issuing a licence they are removing themselves from a lot of the law of copyright as it is illegal to sell a product and charge a licence to use it at the same time. So the product i.e. the physical box and cover and dvd/cd with all its ones and zeros are provided free and you are in fact buying a licensee with the physical access to the licence product through in for free otherwise it would be illegal or at least contradictory.

Quick note not advertising you are purchasing a licence and not a product and making people agree to said licence without been able to read it before hand is illegal practicably everywhere but it has never been brought up in court and actually invalidates the licence but that’s another story.

Also note as you are purchasing a licence instead of a product if you lose your physical access to what you bought a licence for i.e. a scratched or broken disk and as the company that provided the licence does not have any other public access to the licensed material you can legally* acquire access to this material though other means such as downloading the copyrighted material you have a licence for which grants you permission to have a copy of that licensed material. *varies from country to country.As the licence giver provides free access to the copyrighted material through free disks the distribution of this material can not count as a violation of copyright as long as they are shared between licence holders and remember it is not up to you to check , verify, or enforce whether or not a person or group of people you are sharing the material with have licences that is up to the company/individual to enforce any LICENCE VIOLATION rather than copyright
violations.

The above only applies to licences material and not something like a cam recording of a cinema movie as there are no licences involved and normal copyright laws apply but a copy of a dvd which does involve a licence does apply.Please remember you can only share licensed copyrighted material that you own the licence to i.e. by having bought the licence usually though the product. If you don’t own the licence and have be found out all you got to do is buy a license i.e. by buying the product with the licence and sending them prove of licence ownership, remember as they give the copyrighted material away for free but charge for a licence they can not claim damages for distribution of licensed copyrighted material they give away for free but can claim a licence fee OR you can buy a licence by buying the product and showing it to them. They have no other legal recourse if you buy the licence after been found out without one but this does not mean they can try and claim more or even win more sadly as in the courts of law the law usually does not count.

Well hope this has enlightened a few people and for those that tl/dr well maybe someone can give you a quick summery of the above.

EDIT: OMG do not copy and past into and back from open/libra office into the comment box lol

To listen to the Rs, one would think that any government interference in the private sector is one of the worst possible outcomes, and will willingly let known pollutants go unchecked. How is it then that government regulation of communication has been so thoroughly adopted by these “representatives”? I guess only interference that their paymasters dislike is likely to cause the apocalypse….

The copyright owners have adequate laws already. They simply do not want to take the trouble and cost to enforce their rights. Instead, they have decided to buy a few congressmen and have them do it for them.

There is a lot I disagree with here and if everyone on the Internet who opposes SOPA is spouting nonsense about it, their opinions will be easily dismissed. Nothing in this post explains what the mechanisms of SOPA have to do with “eliminating low cost competition.” SOPA supporters are quick to point out that SOPA doesn’t have anything to do with domestic content hosting sites like YouTube. This is not the problem.

The backers of SOPA want a way to go after foreign websites that violate US laws. Those websites might be legal in their respective countries. So, SOPA’s answer is to prevent Americans from accessing them, and to prevent American companies from helping them raise revenue. This is really what the SOPA supports want, and they don’t see what the problem is with it. If these sites were in the US, the Department of Justice would shut them down, and although the case of Dajaz1 indicates that more checks and balances are needed, that fundamental fact is not going to change.

Articulating the problem with this does not require elaborate conspiracy theories about the content industries, nor are those conspiracy theories likely to be persuasive to the Congressmen who will ultimately be making a decision on this thing.

There have been different drafts of SOPA with different problematic provisions but I’ll focus this post on what I see as the central problem.

In order to prevent Americans from accessing these foreign sites, American ISPs are going to have to buy networking infrastructure that enables them to ban websites. This is going flush a lot of money into the development and refinement of products that provide this capability. These products will become more efficient and sophisticated, and the companies that make them to seek out new markets for them and encourage other governments to require their adoption.

Furthermore, banning American users and American revenue sources from a foreign website that US businesses view as a criminal enterprise will not be the end of these foreign websites. In order to SOPA to really work, these American companies will need to go to other major economies and ask them to adopt laws that are similar to SOPA.

Its worth mentioning that discussions and tests of internet filtering infrastructure are going on in Australia. Infrastructure already exists in the UK. It was originally targeted at child pronography but the blacklist has expanded in 2011 to include sites that violate copyright, so in reality SOPA is already in force in the UK. So you get more countries deploying systems for banning access to websites, and you get more and more money flooding into an industry that designs equipment that does this.

With the cost associated with this equipment going down, and an industry out there marketing these products, they’ll find wider uses in more places. More governments will be convinced to pile on the bandwagon. It will become easier and easier to censor content on the Internet.

Just as the types of banned content have expanded in the UK, they will expand in the US – particularly as individual state governments get into the act and start requiring ISPs within their states to ban particular kinds of websites. In the United States the First Amendment will contain the scope of this somewhat, but only through regular court battles with state governments.

The technology that is developed to support SOPA will be used globally and many of the countries that use this technology will use it to suppress dissent and prevent their citizens from accessing international news sources. SOPA contains an anti-circumvention provision that will prevent Americans from developing and distributing tools that people in these countries can use to subvert the filters their governments are putting in place.

Ultimately, SOPA will be a significant step toward an Internet that is a great deal less free than the one we have today – an Internet where anything that people want to censor will be censored, everywhere in the world. An Internet that will not provide a promise of a platform for free thought and communication as it does today.

The content industries don’t want this, but it is the obvious and inevitable consequence of the things that they do want. If America wants to stand for a free Internet, it must not adopt a central filtering system. The content industry and our present Secretary of State have argued otherwise, but they are wrong. The fact is that these two things are mutually exclusive.

That is why SOPA must be stopped. Its not about the ends, its about the means. And we need the supports of SOPA to understand this and back down. They are not going to listen to you if you aren’t willing to understand where they are really coming from.

If SOPA passes, the entire internet and its concept of freedom could be lost, and according to my researches this will make the World Wide Web useless and irrelevant.

Also, I double checked my national (Brazilian) and international (US, Spanish and others) law books and documents, and if this bill passes it MAY (I am not sure, because books and documents have changes from time to time) brake some rights statements.

But the situation is more serious, if it passes we will not have ways to look for a workaround, so it is better to be safe then sorry. So I think that a good alternative to the WWW system is the Dot-BIT.

Although there are not much sites using the Dot-BIT system, I see from their Wiki page that it can grow faster using the “merged mining” and “normal mining” techniques, but the final mining step usually uses the WWW system to make the transaction.

So those who want to create a Dot-BIT site, the time is running out, unless we can find a transaction site entirely Dot-BIT.

Also, if I am right, if this bill passes, the Open Source, and free-like licenses (Such as Creative Commons, General Public License, Open Hardware and free web services) will vanish, so if you, reader, know or have contact with some of those great people, please be sure to share this comment with them.

“Repitilians” is a way to refer to those who own the world. Who? You need first to correct you from inside, them you can start looking for the outside, if you have already made it, start seeking truth and try to search deep inside history (Or maybe I should call it story) and you will see what was planned, wrong, and what really happened.

Touching the subject about industry and music, nowadays we are told to buy music, but if we do so we will lose a cultural trace, because music is one, and cultural traces are not meant to be paid, because it is something that is ours, but we must indeed respect the copyright of the music in general and be sure to remember and respect who made the music and do not erase the credits.

BR. ADFENO
Have a nice day.

Edit: Who thinks Google is against SOPA? Well, them you should look for information about filter bubbles and tracking. DuckDuckGo have a complete set of exemples. Also, Google is not the only which does this things, there are Yahoo, Facebook and many others, including their services (E-mail, maps, document sharing, blog and site services and etc.)

There are alternatives to those chat users: XMPP (Kown as Jabber, I use @Jabber.Org and @Jabber-BR.Org domains. As far as I know it does not have maibox, only instant message, it is free, supports user search using the same domain, and MAYBE (I am not sure) file sharing.)

Chat users have also the IRC, I think irc.freenode.net is the best, but there are others too, instante message and MAYBE file sharing.

For blog writers: I think WordPress is the best, altough I do not know if it supports other e-mail accounts other then Gmail (I am not a WordPress user, and I do not even have blog or site, but I am planning to do one.)